March for Meals ‘Empty Bowls’ fundraiser returns

Colorado Mountain College Rifle culinary students, Lacey Peterson and Kade Frees, are learning how to prepare the soups that will fill hundreds of bowls being created by CMC ceramics students.Dee Warwick

Preparations for the fifth annual “Empty Bowls” luncheon on March 6, 2019, have begun at Grand River Health’s Grand River Ballroom. The fundraiser, which provides a handcrafted bowl to keep, soup refills while they last, bread and beverages in exchange for a $20 donation, raises money for the Grand River Meals on Wheels program. For the first time this year veterans are free (just show your card at the door).

Empty Bowls is coordinated by staff from Grand River Health, and faculty and students from Colorado Mountain College Rifle. For the first time, Peck, director of Grand River Meals on Wheels, is taking ceramics from McCurdy at the Rifle campus of Colorado Mountain College, bringing the event to a poetic full circle.

The idea for the collaboration started in 2015 with McCurdy, an adjunct ceramics instructor at Colorado Mountain College Rifle.

That first year the 187 bowls were sold out within 45 minutes. This year the ceramics students will have crafted almost 500 bowls and 40 gallons of soup for guests to choose from. The luncheon runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on March 6. CMC students will demonstrate bowl making at the pottery wheel throughout the event.

The soup will be made in Grand River Café by Rifle and Coal Ridge high school students who are in the college’s concurrent enrollment culinary program. The students receive both high school and college credit for their culinary studies and internships under Chef Patrick Aulik at Grand River Health. Each team of students will be serving their soup creations and are eager to talk about their culinary choices.